What the Students Think

Memo to the Hobart College Class of '64:Stanley Rubenstein is going into business after all.

Remember Stanley? The intense, bright liberal arts major with the thing against business? "I didn't consider business as a probable career," Rubenstein recalls today. "It didn't have any goals. It was inward looking rather than outward looking, and the Peace Corps seemed more exciting than selling shoelaces." The Peace Corps was where Rubenstein went. But then, with a yen for international economics developed during two years in Africa, Stanley returned home to enter New York University's Graduate School of Business Administration. Finishing this October with a master's degree, he hopes to work in the international field for either a major bank or the Commerce Department. In four years, Stanley Rubenstein has overcome his doubts.

So, as spring hits the campus and job recruitment steps up, has many another student. For years surveys have been indicating that the college generation is antibusiness. A vocal minority is --but many are not. "There's been a disproportionate amount of attention given to this," says Boston University Placement Services Director Victor R. Lindquist. Students who are not going into business are not necessarily anti. "I myself don't want to go into business," says Notre Dame Sociology Senior Peter Noonan. "But to do things like social work or teaching, you have to have a structure. Business in America is what provides that structure. It does the world's work, so other people can solve the world's problems."

Geographical Pattern. Anti-business sentiment on campus varies. It is strong in the Ivy League, weaker in the Big Ten and in the South. Much of it has been generated by the war in Viet Nam. Northwestern Placement Director Dr. Frank S. Endicott points out that "business has been identified with the war for supporting it, and some students say for causing it." Thus students react against such corporations as Dow Chemical, whose napalm epitomizes the war. Even here the reports have been disproportionate; Dow is doing well with its recruiting (TIME, April 5).

Business has also become more popular on campus by taking a lenient attitude toward draft problems. During the Korean War, businessmen rarely considered a student who was liable to be drafted. Now they will hire students who will be drafted within weeks, will also make a place for ROTC students who have to serve two years but would like to know now where they can locate when their service is over.

What, How & Where. More anti-business sentiment is found among liberal arts students than in professional schools. "The people in the business and law schools are all wrapped up in business," says Mike Conway, editor of Northwestern's Daily Northwestern. "So are the engineers, scientists, and the people whose families expect them to return to the family business. That's a very large group." According to a Stanford study by Psychology Professor Thomas W. Harrell, it is also the group best suited to business careers. "It is true," says Harrell, "that few of the best scholars enter business. But then I'm not sure that business needs the best scholars, in contrast to those who are the best organizational leaders."

Many students have anti-business feelings about big corporations but seek out jobs in smaller companies. "The smaller businesses," says Georgia Tech Placement Director A. P. Derosa, "can point out exactly what the man is going to do, how he is going to do it and where." Salary offers consistently increase. The College Placement Council estimates that starting salaries are up 5.4% this spring to $759 a month for engineers and accountants with bachelor's degrees. But just as students prefer smaller companies, they also prefer challenge in business above money. They lean toward companies that will guarantee the shortest training period and the quickest jump into productive work.

To attract students, more and more companies are doing just that. Banks have cut teller training for prospective bank officers from ten months to two. And to diminish whatever anti-business sentiment remains on campus and create a better bond, farsighted businessmen are cultivating personal contacts. Chicago Industrialist Arnold Maremont recently spent three days as a business-man-in-residence at Stanford, visited with hippies as well as grad-school students. Motorola Chairman Robert W. Galvin has been carrying on a dialogue with student leaders in college papers and on campus radio stations that has begun to show results. "I think what he did was good," says Northwestern Student President Barbara Caulfield, one of the dialoguers. "He tried to show that a career in business isn't selfish, but vital." Galvin is so pleased with the dialogue that he is presently deep in plans to continue it next year.

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